Xochiquetzal Candelaria

The Loudspeaker of the People’s Army

In the Ogaden desert, they skim it from muddy water,
pour it over cactus meat: ululations crisp as morning birds.

*

With fossils they tune innards. With tails write.
Pause for good light. Let it pass through remains,
the Loudspeaker warbling in low tones.

*

In Oaxaca, they carve it of radishes. Contorted
shapes shaved into violins, slung into trees
cutting a thick, rained foliage sonata
for African bees. Some measures drizzling
the branches others hidden in the roots,

*

the pulse endlessly trilling
in the City of Angels, where it
resurfaces by the docks:
fifty varieties of night shade and sweet pearl,
fifty sacks of thistle grown entirely by pitch.

*

As the what if of the inflamed song
split the surface like a whale’s tail,
Argentines collected sun-bleached
cardboard in the storm of bells, knowing
hours by the heat of another’s body.

*

When we fix the trains will we hear it en masse,
the solipsistic question: why do they hate us? flaking
to an inarticulate texture,
dusty rafters quaking, until undone, hornlike
piece by piece we enter the Loudspeaker
addressed as stranger?

*

You are the last stranger,
little organ, little ear
all your lorries loaded with air.
When you feel me kiss you
during the overture of wild goats,
I’m caressing a rhythm.